Five employees test positive for coronavirus at Ridgefield senior facility

Benchmark Senior Living at Ridgefield Crossing, on Route 7, in Ridgefield, Conn. March 19, 2020. An 88-year-old former resident of the facility became the state’s first COVID-19 fatality. He died Wednesday morning at Danbury Hospital.

Benchmark Senior Living at Ridgefield Crossing, on Route 7, in Ridgefield, Conn. March 19, 2020. An 88-year-old former resident of the facility became the state’s first COVID-19 fatality. He died Wednesday

Benchmark Senior Living at Ridgefield Crossing, on Route 7, in Ridgefield, Conn. March 19, 2020. An 88-year-old former resident of the facility became the state’s first COVID-19 fatality. He died Wednesday morning at Danbury Hospital.

Benchmark Senior Living at Ridgefield Crossing, on Route 7, in Ridgefield, Conn. March 19, 2020. An 88-year-old former resident of the facility became the state’s first COVID-19 fatality. He died Wednesday

Five employees test positive for coronavirus at Ridgefield senior facility

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RIDGEFIELD — Five employees have tested positive for COVID-19 at an assisted-living facility that has already seen two residents die from the disease and over a dozen residents become infected.

Officials at Ridgefield Crossings, a facility operated by Benchmark Senior Living off Route 7, said Thursday an additional employee there is awaiting test results for the virus.

“These associates, along with all associates who were identified as having high exposure to confirmed COVID-19 cases, have already been outside of the community on leave to limit the risk of potential spread of the virus,” a spokesperson for the facility said.

Two residents of the assisted-living home have died after they were taken to the hospital with the disease.

A third death from the virus reported in Ridgefield was a resident from a private home who was not connected to Benchmark Senior Living, Health Director Ed Briggs said Thursday.

On Monday, a second person who had been a resident at the facility died.

In confirming Ridgefield’s second death from the coronavirus, a spokesman for the facility said tests of all the residents at the assisted-living home found 16 other residents there who had the illness.

As of Thursday, a spokesperson for Benchmark Senior Living said no additional residents have tested positive beyond those 16.

The five employees who are sick and the employee awaiting test results have “already been outside of the community on leave to limit the risk of potential spread of the virus,” the spokesperson said. Those employees are continuing to be paid while they are on leave, she said.

The assisted-living home, which includes a memory-care facility for people with cases of dementia, also shares some part-time nursing aides with Laurel Ridge, a separate nursing home located on the same campus.

In a statement, Benchmark Senior Living said they could not prevent workers from working at other companies that would take them outside of Ridgefield Crossings. The company said it has started asking employees if they do have a other jobs to manage the possibility they could be exposed to COVID-19.

The company declined to say how many employees worked at other jobs or where they worked, citing the employees’ privacy .

Officials at both Ridgefield Crossings and Athena Health Care Systems, which owns Laurel Ridge said they are taking steps halt the spread of the virus. Those include taking the temperatures of their employees daily and having them don protective equipment when they come to work.

State Health Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell said Tuesday the state is investigating all contacts between patients and staff at nursing homes in the state, but did not elaborate on the issue of part time workers.

Gov. Ned Lamont has repeatedly brought up testing and monitoring at nursing homes as a concern.

A day before the first coronavirus diagnosis in Connecticut was made, Lamont’s first question during a private briefing in his office was about the safety of nursing home residents.

At that time, the virus was raging through a nursing home near Seattle, and Lamont’s greatest concern was a similar situation unfolding here.

The next day, Friday March 6, he publicly advised people to limit visitation to nursing homes, and by the end of the following week it was among the first of Lamont’s executive orders signed under the declared public health emergency.

“We know that nursing homes can be a petri dish,” Lamont said Tuesday, adding, “We saw what happened in Kirkland Washington in that nursing home there and we’re going to do the best we can, sometimes we’re sailing against the wind, to make sure that doesn’t happen in our nursing homes.”